Twigs to Trees

June, 2023

Mary Helen Haines

 

Welcome to summer and the Scottish gaming season. Some of you have already attended games in Florida, and we hope to see you at other games throughout the season. At CMW we are also getting ready for our annual Board elections. Every year we get the chance to add 3 board members as the terms end for three present board members. I am one of those whose term ends this year. I hope you will consider running for a Board position in the future; it is nice to be a part of our clan leadership and help guide the future. Speaking of democratic institutions, voting is a right we should not take lightly. It has been hard won over a long time period, and we can be proud of our forbearers who fought for those rights, which brings me to the history below.

A little over 200 years ago, Iain George Macfarlane’s ancestor, Thomas McFarlane, participated in the Radical Rising of 1820 to better the lives of working classes in Scotland. Since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, economic hardships and the lack of political freedoms had led to organizing, petitions, peaceful demonstrations and workingmen’s strikes. Fed up with inaction or positive responses from those in power, on April 1, 1820, a Proclamation was issued in Glasgow calling for a Provisional Government and a general strike. The Proclamation called for equality of rights with the motto “Liberty or Death.” The strike led to a work shut-down of approximately 60,000 men in the weaving communities throughout central Scotland. Paramilitary drills took place in different places and the government was on high alert.

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